Adobe Scan or SignMaster: which scanner fits your paperwork?

What Adobe Scan does for free

• Searchable PDFs. Adobe says Scan turns scans into searchable PDFs with OCR. Its App Store listing says a subscription raises OCR capacity from 5 to 100 pages.
• Capture types. Document, whiteboard, form, book (one capture split into two pages), ID card (front, then back, on one page) and business card, which adds a Save to Contacts option for your phone's contacts.
• Cleanup tools. Reorder, crop, rotate, filters, brightness and contrast, a paper size for every page, and an eraser for marks you don't want.
• Photo library pickup. The listing says it finds documents and receipts already in your photo library and turns them into PDFs.
• Adobe's cloud. Scans are stored in Adobe Document Cloud storage and open in Acrobat on other devices, including Android phones.

What Adobe Scan keeps for Premium

Adobe's help pages list these as subscription features: combining up to 20 files into one PDF, compressing PDFs, setting a password to open a PDF, exporting to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and rich text, and the higher OCR limit. On the US App Store, Adobe Scan Premium is $9.99 a month, and Adobe says subscriptions work across the Scan and Reader apps and Acrobat on the web. Asking other people to sign goes through Acrobat; a free Adobe account can send two e-signature requests every 30 days on a rolling basis.

Adobe Scan and SignMaster side by side

Adobe figures come from Adobe's Scan page, its Adobe Scan for iOS help pages, its request-signature page and its US App Store listing, read on November 9, 2026, in US dollars.

Where Adobe Scan is stronger

• You need editable Office files. Premium exports scans to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. SignMaster can give you plain text, not a formatted document.
• Your team mixes iPhone and Android. Adobe Scan runs on both. SignMaster's app is iPhone and iPad only.
• You already live in Acrobat. Scans land in the same Adobe cloud as your other PDFs, and Acrobat's tools are a tap away.
• Whiteboards and forms. Adobe has a whiteboard mode that keeps the whole camera view, and a form mode that opens Fill & Sign.
• Business cards go to your iPhone's contacts. SignMaster saves them to SignMaster's contacts, which is handy for sending but not for calling from your phone.

Where SignMaster fits better

SignMaster's scanner is built for people whose paper turns into a signature, a filed record or both: contractors, landlords, office managers. In the iPhone and iPad app, every mode is on every plan, the text in every scan is read on the phone, and scans are named for you, like "Receipt · Oct 9, 2:14 PM", or with the job folder leading the name.

The bigger difference is what comes next. Save the scan and choose Send for signature: add the signers, place their fields and slide to send. Signers open an email link on any phone or computer, with no account, and everyone gets the signed PDF with a certificate of completion. Or choose Sign in person and hand the phone over; signing mode fills the screen until your Face ID, Touch ID or passcode ends it. With Adobe, the scan and the signature request live in two different apps.

Using both, or switching

1. 1

   Keep Adobe Scan for Office exports

   If you convert scans to Word, there's no reason to stop. Save the PDFs that need signing to Files.

2. 2

   Bring PDFs into SignMaster

   In the SignMaster app's Scan tab, tap Files and pick the PDF. It goes into your Documents as it is, text layer included, ready to sign or send.

3. 3

   Scan new paper where it'll be signed

   For contracts, change orders and IDs, scan in SignMaster so the scan, the signatures and the signed copy stay together.